Mutualists and Soil Biota Contributions to Ecosystems

Soil communities play a crucial role in the nutrient cycling that structures soil, plant, insect and animal communities.

I am currently using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (tRFLP) analyses paired with broader assessments of soil communities in greenhouse and field experiments to explore how plants structure their soil communities, how AM fungi and other soil biota contribute to nutrient cycling, and how global change (simulated at AspenFACE in Rheinlander, Wisconsin) alters feedbacks to soil and plant communities. Preliminary enzyme activity results suggest that poplar genotypes cultivate unique functional communities, while preliminary tRFLP analyses have identified unique communities of operational taxonomic units.

The contribution of soil organisms to ecosystem processes has largely been overlooked in theoretical and mathematical explorations of ecosystems. To address this gap James Umbanhower (UNC) and I organized an Investigational Workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS).